"selfish materialist"

[laurielee]

For years I had interpreted the passage in this week's lesson "selfish materialist" (Science and Health, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 51) to have the slang meaning of materialist, like someone who shops too much, or collects too many material possessions. But recently I've learned that materialism was a theory and movement during Mary Baker Eddy lifetime. An 1828 Noah Webster dictionary defines materialist as "one who denies the existence of spiritual substances and maintains that the sole of man is the result of a particular organization of matter in the body." A similar definition is the first in the modern webster dictionary. Materialism was also developed into a political theory by Karl Marx and Frederich Engles. Materialism is not what I thought it was!

Last year I was in Wal-Mart marvelling at the massive amount of stuff for sale, and it occurred to me that each item there represented a job for someone somewhere in the world. Then I kind of chuckled at the thought, we might have to endure this kind of abundance for everyone to be fully employed! Now I can see this isn't enduring materialism, it is simply abundance, our cup running over. :-)

[iPodGal]

Hi!

Your post made me think of how I view an apple seed. Or apples. Or apple trees.

The thought of the whole tree full of fruit ... it's all contained in the seed.

I think of all the people who will eat those apples, who will bake them into pies, cobblers, family holiday gatherings, a resourceful woman who shook them off a tree in my church parking lot because she wanted to make fried apples, applesauce ... the time in the kitchen with family bonding over cooking the apples and the eating of the apple pies....

All of this good is contained in the tiny little apple seed. It reminds me of Jesus talking about mustard seeds. How humble they are, yet it grows to be a wonderful plant so large that birds nest in the branches.

I was at a Starbucks the other day, and shared with the woman I was with... you can see God everywhere! Instead of looking at the display items and thinking they are temporal and breakable and junk, just look - those represent not only jobs for people, but the creativity behind them. And the people who sell them to Starbucks. The people who produce them & make them in bulk. The people who ship them in boxes. The people who deliver them. All those people make a living and feed their families. I am grateful for all these families to benefit from the beginning creativity that created those mugs in the first place. And, come to think of it, the people who buy those will share coffee together and bond over other wonderful joyous conversations...

In this way, aren't we praying for the whole world? One mug at a time. One item on a store shelf at a time.

With joy.

[ian]

When I read both of your comments I was thinking about how your ideas relate to concerns about the environment. It was an interesting relation because many people feel this abundance leads to destruction (pollution because of packaging and after the product is no longer needed). I think you both touch on perhaps an idea that reverses some of these fears.

How can ideas and creativity ever lead to destruction?